Jennifer Pippard

Director, Strategic Partnerships

Jennifer Pippard, previously Director of Community Investments, will now serve as Director of the Strategic Partnerships Department. Pippard will be responsible for developing organization-wide partnerships that contribute to the advancement of First 5 LA’s strategic plan outcomes. She will further develop First 5 LA’s relationships with philanthropy, business, and educational institutions to advance First 5 LA’s policy and systems change agenda.

Jennifer Pippard, M.S.W. has been a Senior Program Officer at First 5 LA since 2003 in the Program & Planning and Community Investments Departments. Over the last three years in the Community Investments (CI) Department, Jennifer and her team have initiated innovative leveraging partnerships that increased funds for young children in Los Angeles County. The CI Department invests in emerging opportunities and facilitates partnerships to catalyze and mobilize external financial and non-financial resources that support children 0-5 and their families in Los Angeles County. Some of the CI Department projects under her leadership include First 5 LA's first Match and Challenge Grant Program, a pilot social enterprise program, a partnership with DonorsChoose.org, and the City of Los Angeles Parks Foundation that resulted in the creation of three pocket parks in First 5 LA's Best Start communities.

During her time in the Planning and Development Department she supported general operations, strategic planning efforts and oversaw a range of large scale initiatives such as Prenatal through Three (Best Start) and Partnerships for Families.

Immediately before arriving at First 5 LA she was the Program Director of Neighborhood Networks4Kids (NN4K), and the Los Angeles Youth Council under the City of Los Angeles' Commission for Children, Youth and Their Families from 1996 to 2003. A Neighborhood Networks4Kids was established in each of the City's 14 Council Districts. NN4K brought together community residents, parents, and youth with representatives of city departments, local businesses, schools, community-based organizations, and the local City Council office in order to develop solutions to problems in their community. Youth Council members serve as advocates of the City's youth by promoting existing City sponsored programs, identifying the need for new programs and activities and by securing the involvement of young people into the City's governmental processes.

Originally from Washington State, Jennifer comes from a "social work family." Her parents, brother and sister-in-law are all social workers. After receiving her Bachelor's Degree in Sociology, from Western Washington University, she served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ecuador, South America. After returning from the Peace Corps she moved to Los Angeles to earn her MSW, from the University of Southern California. Her social work experience in Los Angeles includes foster care social work, Healthy Start Program, school social work, and family day care programs. She served as the first project director of Comienzo Sano/Healthy Beginnings, a program that offered undocumented mothers social supports and connected them to a medical provider through community promotoras. She implemented Comienzo Sano/Healthy Beginnings under the Olive View Medical Center Foundation, housed at the Vaughn Family Center in Pacoima. In addition, she has consulted with various organizations that focus on building communities to best support children and families including the Children's Planning Council.

Jennifer, her beautiful daughter Jessica and her large Newfoundland Cassie live in Altadena.

Imagine as a child having the freedom to bring up any topic for discussion as desired during family meals? For Jennifer Pippard, it was a wonderful way to grow up.
“We often laugh now that the food may have not been so tasty — as there ...